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It was anything but Trouble in Store

by KRISS GEOFFREYS

One thing is certain. No one knew what was in store for British films when Trouble In Store took the floor at Pinewood Studios. No one expected trouble. After all, Norman Wisdom was a sure-fire comic and John Paddy Carstairs was a first-rate comedy director.

But equally certainly no one expected to produce the miraculously successful film that Trouble In Store turned out to be (the picture is one of the "Films We're Glad we've seen").

In fact, to begin with, the whole project was approached with something like trepidation. Even producer Maurice Cowan admitted that he was a bit cautious about the job. And it was with a little reluctance that he agreed to do it.

His reluctance was a personal thing. He didn't know Wisdom; he'd never met him. Of course, he'd seen him on TV and once on the variety stage. And he'd liked him very much. But that wasn't quite the same as working with an accepted film player. Comics, after all, had been known to be as temperamental as an operatic diva on an off-day.

But there was another side to this faint apprehension that surrounded the early stages of preparation for Trouble In Store. Comics - particularly popular ones who had made their names on TV or the halls - hadn't fared too luckily in British films.

Either the comics hadn't grasped the fundamentals of comedy in films, or the scripts hadn't been properly geared to their kind of comedy. Whatever it was, it was no light task to take on the job of presenting one of Britain's favourite funny men to the picturegoers.

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needed to worry. As producer Cowan put it: "Norman was wonderful, as a person and as a performer. His behaviour-as a schoolmaster might say-was exemplary."

Now what, in a comic, would exemplary mean? It meant that he worked wholeheartedly as one of the gang all through the production. It meant that, although a fine, successful comic, he still took the same size in hats as he did

First there was the question of script. The Rank Organization had been searching for what it considered the right one for many months. Several had been suggested. And several times Wisdom seemed set to start filming.

Eventually the story that seemed to have all the right possibilities came to light. John Paddy Carstairs, Maurice Cowan and Ted Willis wrote the screenplay. And it seemed good.

But so much would depend on Wisdom. As it happened no one

when he was a struggling player. It meant that he took his work tremendously seriously; he adapted himself straight away to the film technique and he was-and is-a perfectionist.

Most of all, it meant that he had a sense of humour. Does that sound strange? Oddly enough, many comics have no real sense of humour. Norman Wisdom has. He could laugh at himself -and he could laugh at the trials and tribulations of picture-making. He needed to.

While the film was being made at Pinewood, the stand-ins went on strike

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for several days. That meant that all the stars filming had to spend gruelling hours under the studio lights, while the director positioned them and arranged the camera angles. For most stars that was bad enough. For Wisdom it meant that during his long day at the studio-starting before eight- there was hardly any rest at all. And on top of that he was appearing in a show at a London theatre in the evenings. It worked out that, except for Sundays, he got about six hours to himself out of twenty-four. But Wisdom kept on smiling. His cheerfulness infected the entire unit. Working out the comedy sequences on the picture was largely a joint effort. You can put just so much into a script after that it depends on the directors ingenuity and the comic's imagination. It didn't take Wisdom-used to the one-man techniques of the halls-long to appreciate this. He would button-hole director Carstairs and producer Cowan at every available opportunity to work out new gimmicks. Wisdom proved so conscientious in his job that the unit

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	that scene where Wisdom takes a header into a duck pond, Wisdom eyed Carstairs thoughtfully. Carstairs saw the point. He took the ducking, too. Eventually the picture was finished. All concerned kept their fingers crossed. A measure of the genuine enthusiasm for Wisdom on the set is shown in this fact. A visitor to the studio talked with cameramen, director, producer and the other stars - Lana Morris, Jerry Desmonde, Moira Lister of the film. Everyone without exception was rooting hard for Norman. Maybe their rooting did the trick. i've a suspicion, though, that it had much more to do with Wisdom's natural comic genius and a lot of hard work. At any rate, when the Rank people held a sneak show of the film in a suburban cinema they heard the constant roar of laughter. Even so,

honestly feared for, if not his life, exactly, at least his limbs. During a scene in Trouble In Store he had to be caught in a rush of shoppers during a sale. The shoppers-extras, of course treated him lightly, naturally. But Wisdom was genuinely upset. It didn't look authentic. Nothing would satisfy him but that the extras knock him about as the script demanded. When he'd proved his point, he was happy—and very, very bruised. But all agreed that the "real" thing helped the scene. Sunday after Sunday, while the studio was closed, the three men-Wisdom, Carstairs and Cowan-would talk shop, planning and working on Trouble In Store. On-set, while he kept the cameramen in fits of laughter, Wisdom would rehearse and rehearse. But there was spontaneous fun on the set, too. Carstairs promised Wisdom that he wouldn't ask him to do anything that he wouldn't do himself. While they were shooting

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they didn't give the film a West End showing, they slipped it out on release. But the critics were invited to see it - and they confirmed that sneak-preview audience's opinion. Wisdom was the screen comic find of the decade. But was he the picturegoers choice, too? Was he! The answer to that is to be found in the queues, the fabulous queues that nightly waited patiently to see this comic gem of a picture. Already - in less than a year - the film has been re-issued time and again. Hardly any British films, if any at all, have been so wholeheartedly welcomed by picturegoers. And to think, there were probably not more than a handful of people who would have betted on its box office chances when it was just a germ of an idea.